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I’ve Been Thinking About the Brady Bunch

I’ve been thinking a lot about judgment lately. About how, usually, the one who stands in judgment doesn’t think he (or she) is judging. They just know they’re right. I didn’t learn this until as a freshman in college I read a book called The Children of Pride, which contained transcripts of letters written by Confederate civilians during the American Civil War, so certain that they would win it, because they knew that God was on their side.

I’ve been thinking about the limits of knowledge. About how a person who knows nothing about, for example, Tarot cards might be fearful of them because they believe someone who consults them might make a life-altering decision based on a picture on a card. About how a person who knows nothing about them could not possibly know that they are often used to stimulate thought in a direction it might not otherwise go, like the daily WordPress cue for a blog topic, or to offer perspective–like, for me, getting on an airplane and looking out an oval porthole that shows the world I know from ten thousand feet off the ground, reminding me of the vast Sonoran Desert, the barren Indian reservations, the wideness of space beyond my kitchen sink filled with yesterday’s dishes.

I’ve been thinking about trust. When I was nine or ten years old, a neighbor found some drunk from the harborside bar down the street asleep on her couch, and we started locking the front door. I remember my mother talking about burglars and murderers. I remember picturing the steak knives in the kitchen cupboard, which was unlocked, and wondering why we, the ones behind the locked door together with all those steak knives, weren’t afraid of each other. After some thought, I concluded that we trusted each other because it was in our best interest, both individually and as a group, not to hurt each other. We trusted each other also because there was no history in our immediate family of anyone knifing anything other than a T-bone. We trusted one another to be rational. “Rationality is not universal,” writes Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. “Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it.” Whether you love or hate Ayn Rand, you have to concede her an extreme clarity of thought, and anyone who’s ever lived with a four-year-old knows these words ring true. But to accuse an adult of acting irrationally is to pass a grave sentence. It assumes that you have access to all relevant information. And that you recognize what is relevant. It denies the accused a chance to explain themselves based on logic because it renders their premise crazy. It may say more about your lack of knowledge than their lack of rationale. Ayn Rand also famously wrote, “Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

I’ve been thinking of acceptance. About accepting the things we do not understand, and of recognizing the things that are not ours to change.

I’ve been thinking lately about strength. About how sometimes the stronger someone is, the greater the burden they can bear and the more quietly they can tolerate it and the longer they can endure. And the more surprised and indignant others are when they say, at last, “Enough.”

I’ve been thinking about times of hardship. How historically, during plagues or famines, a social group turns on one individual, or a small group of individuals–who are different from the rest, to persecute them for not following certain conventions of society, certain rules. Consider medieval witch trials, during which intelligent women, often women who were healers using herbs the medicinal properties of which the community did not grasp, were burned or drowned.

I’ve been thinking about times of need. My mother once told me–when her children, jokingly, pressed her to choose her favorite among us, “My favorite child is the one who needs me most at any given time.” I’ve always loved that answer and now, as a mother, I am learning that I cannot always know which of my children needs me most at any given time. It is not always the one who comes whining to me.

I’ve been thinking about the Brady Bunch. About how they are not real. They are on TV. They are two-dimensional and never to go to the bathroom.